I'm a lightweight modder myself. I do well on the hacking and wiring bit, but when it comes to painting... I've discovered that painting is my enemy. I've currently got a dusty Antec SX1030 sitting and waiting for me to strip and sand off the train wreck that is the blue pearl coat that I tried on it in October. Funny how an artist by edumacation can't paint worth a flip. Heh.

I'm a relative newby and in fact I've never done any sort of modding but I do plan on in a few days try to dremel out a few holes for some fans to attach to the side of my case. The case is an ugly beige so I hope I can brighten it up some time too!

Biggest "mod" I've done is grab a Matrix Orbital display and put it in my MP3 server. Now it runs headless and I still know what's happening on it. I've cut myself on too many cases without cutting to want to try it intentionally .

If you buy a dremel I recommend getting one that is not cordless. I bought one from Walmart for around 40. Worked great but for every 20 minutes I cut the dremel had to be recharged for 3 hours. That delayed my project for a long time.

Not only that, the cordless ones are weaker and cheaper. You get what you pay for -- mine burned out after a couple of months. In fairness, a lot of the work I did could have been accomplished with tin snips or a drill.

Not to mention that the bits are cheap as well; you can frequently use the "cut off wheels", which are a carbon fiber disk. They cut through damn near anything, and $4.00-US will get you 10 of them.
Add a buffing file attachment for $2 to smooth the edges, and you're off.

Problem is, Dremels have a reputation for burning out...either the batteries (for the cordless models), or the motors themselves. I'm looking at either the Black&Decker or Craftsman alternatives; they're supposed to be heavier-duty than the Dremel brand, and the bits are interchangeable.

My friend never had any trouble with his dremel, though we never did any heavy duty work with it. Mostly just cutting through thin lexan. anything worse than that (i.e. 1/4" plexi) and we used his band saw. they are very handy for small cutting jobs though, and the versatility you get through their many attachments make them very nice.

As I recall (From my last time in Sears and many others) that Craftsman has a lifetime warranty on any product should it break, fail, or just plain screw up under normal working conditions. I'm pretty sure that is how it is so I'd feel pretty safe buying a craftsman.

First time modder here. I recently got all the tools for a case mod I plan to do. An Enermax Fs-1030BB (Blue Bezzel and black body) A Dremel Multirotary pro kit, A blacklight and a blue cold chatode light, UV Addative for water, Plexiglass and a compleate water kit. If anyone is interested I'll post my results sometime next week when it's done.